Almost everyone alive knows that Andy and Opie (Ron Howard) lived with Aunt Bee (Frances Bavier), who had raised Andy and who, when flustered flustered said “Oh, fiddle-faddle!”

Barney Fife (Don Knotts) was the inept but loveable deputy. When Knotts, who won five Emmy Awards for this role, left the show in 1965, they explained it by saying he became a detective in Raleigh. He got a brief shot at his own variety show, The Don Knotts Show, in 1971.

Another regular who got his own show was Jim Nabors whose character Gomer Pyle was spun off.

There wasn’t much crime in Mayberry, North Carolina, so much of the show was devoted to Andy dispensing his gentle wisdom.

Andy didn’t have much of a love life. In the first season he had a girlfriend, druggist Ellie Walker, played by Elinor Donahue of Father Knows Best fame. Then he has a long dry spell until in 1964 schoolteacher Helen Crump (Anita Corsuat) and he got sporty.She also provided Andy Griffith’s 1968 exit. In the first episode of Mayberry R.F.D., Andy and Helen got married and moved away.

Passings

Frances Bavier died in 1989 of congestive heart failure due to heart attack. Also, Denver Pyle died in 1997, Parley Baer in 2002, Aneta Corsan in 1995, Jack Dodson in 1994, Dick Elliott in 1961, Howard McNear, in 1969, Howard Morris in 2005, Don Knotts in 2006 and Jim Nabors in 2017 at 87.
And sadly Andy Griffith passed away July 3, 2012 of a heart attack, he was 86. R.I.P. Andy